Uncertain to the last moment, Harvey did at length hurry into his dress clothes, and start for Fitzjohn Avenue.

He had little mind for the semi-fashionable crowd and the amateur music, but he could not answer Mrs.Bennet Frothingham with any valid excuse, and, after all, she meant kindly towards him.

Why he enjoyed so much of this lady's favour it was not easy to understand; intellectual sympathy there could be none between them, and as for personal liking, on his side it did not go beyond that naturally excited by a good-natured, feather-brained, rather pretty woman, whose sprightliness never passed the limits of decorum, and who seemed to have better qualities than found scope in her butterfly existence.

Perhaps he amused her, being so unlike the kind of man she was accustomed to see.

His acquaintance with the family dated from their social palingenesis, when, after obscure prosperity in a southern suburb, they fluttered to the northern heights, and were observed of the paragraphists.